


i will tell you if you've changed

by fated_addiction



Category: K-pop, Real Person Fiction, So Nyuh Shi Dae | Girls' Generation, 소녀시대 | Girls' Generation | SNSD
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Friendship, Romance, Sicagate, a lot of feelings just happened okay, idk guys idk, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 07:40:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4779068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fated_addiction/pseuds/fated_addiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The airport bar is six gates away from where she should be sitting.</i>
</p><p>Taeyeon has never believed in being older and wiser. It's a bunch of bullshit, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i will tell you if you've changed

**Author's Note:**

> This took a life of its own, started on the back of napkin in the middle of Shake Shack because WHO AM I GUYS waiting for a burger that took twenty minutes and had a soggy bun, so what else was I supposed to do?
> 
> Anyways. I have a lot of feelings about these girls.

The day promotions end, the company calls her to the offices with some degree of practiced excitement to say: "Now, it's your turn!" because for once, their prized girl group is riding high on a comeback of scandalous triumphs and dating confessions. 

"They're going to send me to the States," she tells Tiffany on the phone. Her voice is flat and one of her earbuds are free. "Like CL ... or something."

Tiffany laughs, delighted. "Yah," she says. "You're not going to sell any records if you rap. It would be like you had an identity crisis or something. Stick to writing love songs, Tae."

"I can barely tie my own shoes," she replies, dryly.

Tiffany laughs again and Taeyeon listens, half-relieved for some kind of familiarity. She hates coming to the company alone. It feels like some sort of omen. She knows that the girls are all busy with their various schedules today, in different parts of the city with different shows, events, and drama shootings. Usually she can stand to be in the offices when she knows all of them are nearby, in the practice room, hiding ice cream and messy selcas.

They're just older now. This is a different reality; hand in hand, it also brings her solo album and a heavier sense of loneliness.

"Are you all right?"

Tiffany's voice is gentle. Taeyeon blinks. She plasters on a smile when she spots the office coordinator walking down the hallway in the glass windows and door.

"Fine," she answers. She rubs her eyes, squirming. "Just ready to be busy again, I guess. So if it's sending me to the States, I'll head to the States."

There is a pause. Tiffany's sigh is light.

"You're a terrible liar, Kim Taeyeon," she says.

 

 

 

 

The morning she leaves for New York, her younger sister sends her a photo text, captioned with series of emojis and question marks that make Taeyeon sigh and ignore it until she gets to the car.

"I'll put the radio on," her manager says and she only nods, settling back into her seat and opening the message.

It's a photo of Jessica. 

It's early enough in the morning to make her squint and sigh, piecing together her sister's message with is basically just _this is the shirt you gave me, right?_ which is halfway true, an accident, and everything in between. It's an equally terrifying feeling to look at the photo, something that she's been accustomed to for awhile now anyway.

You can't break a habit, she thinks. She monitors all the girls. She knows that Sooyoung will fly to London for fashion week and already, magazines are anticipating what she might or might not wear. People are still talking about Yoona's breakup; it earned her a mention in a military girlfriend's blog post, which Taeyeon couldn't finish reading without wanting to comment and defend, defend, defend.

Jessica's photos are different. She reads the magazines. She sees the comments on the photo shoots. The quotes haunt her from time to time: _now I don't always have to be happy_. There are other things, other platforms and words tossed around like ethical sourcing, business choices, and target groups that she reads and can speak about too; replace fashion, insert music, and you're speaking the same language.

Her finger traces Jessica's face against her phone though. She frowns, wonders if she's eating, and sunglasses, you know, are the easiest weapon against terrible photos and dark circles. She looks cold though, wiser maybe, and there's an unhealthy weight of envy that resonates with Taeyeon because Jessica looks more like Sooyeon than ever before.

"You should sleep."

Taeyeon blinks, looks up, and realizes that she's been caught. Her manager is smiling in the mirror and she bites her lip, pushing her tongue against her teeth.

"Sure, oppa," she says. "I should, right?"

He nods. "I'll wake you up when we get there."

She nods back, turns off her phone, and puts in her earbuds without turning on any music. Her body turns into the window, her head pushing against the glass as she lets her eyes close slowly.

Taeyeon won't sleep. 

 

 

 

 

The airport bar is six gates away from where she should be sitting. Her flight has a three hour delay; Taeyeon informs her handlers in New York that she will be late, she'd rather go to the studio straight away, and three hours is not enough time to go back home and sleep off the rest of the morning anyway.

She doesn't know what possesses her though. The bar is empty. It's bright and wooden panels seem to be more of an odd design choice to contrast the industrial look of the airport as a whole.

The bartender smiles and greets her with a nod when she points to an empty table by the widows and the planes.

"Orange juice," she greets back. "Please," she says too, when she should really just be having hot water and lemon.

She puts a magazine on the table in front of her. Sooyoung's face smiles back at her. She breathes and rubs her eyes. Habits are habits, of course.

"Here."

Taeyeon freezes. Next to the magazine, a cup and saucer appear. There is lemon and water, a tuft of steam fizzing into the air in front of her. There's an extra wedge of lemon on the saucer too and she swallows, the back of her throat heavy.

Across from her, the chair is pulled back and Jessica sits. She leans her clutch on the window ledge next to her and smiles as the bartender hands her a coffee.

"Thank you," she says and her voice is clear, too clear. She smiles too.

Taeyeon loses her words.

Her mind spins into fallacies: what will the company say, is the bond mended, no hard feelings between former members -- someone is bound to see them, that is the way this is supposed to go, considering that Jessica has spend most of her days, since she left, in and out of airports and suitcases. At least, this is what the Internet wants to tell her.

They stare at each other. Taeyeon drinks her in; her hand hovers over the water as an afterthought.

"Hi," she says, and the sound of her voice is strange, maybe impossibly strange. It feels like it changes into something small and low. It feels odd.

"Hello," Jessica returns. She nods towards her drink. "You know better," she scolds gently. "You have to take care of your voice."

Her members will tell you that Taeyeon is the worst when she is alone. Jessica used to say it simply, shrugging: _she's just shy_. What it is -- is only that Taeyeon feels reachable, pliant, and terrified enough to say something stupid.

She opens her mouth then. It closes. It opens again and her teeth pick at her lip.

"I miss you," she murmurs.

Jessica's bangs drop into her eyes. Her gaze settles over her coffee.

"You're going to New York," she says back instead. It sounds like a guess; this isn't the truth. "So am I," she adds. "Apparently the weather is really bad over there and they're trying to fit the schedule of the flight with one of our layovers. And, well, the wind here just sucks."

"How do you know?" she half-blurts. She takes in Jessica too: an elegant blazer, but her shoulders are thin, and jeans, of course, because it's a business decision and her denim line is doing really, really well.

Jessica holds up her phone. "I checked the weather, talked to an attendant, and rescheduled a few meetings." She shrugs. "It wouldn't be the first delay I've met."

Taeyeon nods slowly. She feels strange. Her shoulders drop into a hunch and there are about a million things she wants to say. It's like spending an obscene amount of time imagining what this moment could, would, and should be, but only to fall flat and feel like she's sixteen, training, and here comes Sooyeon, all over again, this force of nature that did nothing but confuse and charm her all the same.

"I'm recording in New York," she says finally.

Jessica nods. "Soojungie told me."

"Ah." She looks down, embarrassed. Taeyeon finally takes a sip from her hot water and burns the tip of her tongue. "I've been an awful sunbae and eonni. I've been meaning to have some kind of lunch with her," she finishes.

"She'd like that," Jessica says just as carefully. She leans forward. "Are you writing your album? Like you wanted to?"

There is something so poignantly about those words, cruel even, and Taeyeon swallows and looks away.

"Maybe," she says. "I'm recording the first half. I'm not too confident in what I've been writing lately."

Jessica bites her lip. "That doesn't sound like you."

"Then what _does_?"

She snaps and regrets it all in the same, strange and fluid moment. She sinks her teeth into her lip, watching one of Jessica's masks settle in.

"I don't know," she answers. Her lips curl and she looks away. The light from the window curls around her profile. "But don't let your lack of confidence stop you."

They fall into silence. 

Jessica shows no signs of moving from the table. There is still the magazine in front of her as well. It's entirely too painful, not knowing what to say, and as they lapse further into silence, she watches as the other woman opens her phone and starts texting, pausing to drink from her coffee.

Finally, she opens her magazine and flips to Sooyoung and her feature. She does not touch her water again and reaches for her sunglasses, just in case, while fighting the urge to look back up again and away from Sooyoung's pictures.

Read, she tells herself.

The clothes are classic. There are no quotes until the article in the next couple of pages. The beginning is always simple with just a caption on the side.

She wears this by _this_. In ten more minutes, Taeyeon will open her phone and monitor her airport photos. They will say it too: she wears this by _this_ and unsurprisingly, frame her into a photo next to Jessica because people have to know.

Taeyeon keeps her head bowed over the magazine.

They stay at the bar for an hour. The second hour, their flight is changed and has a new route. They might exchange a goodbye; no one sees them.

Circumstances, of course.

 

 

 

 

Her fourth week into New York, she makes the phone call. It takes a lot of begging, pleading, and calls to the right people, as well as calls to both Tiffany and Sooyoung ("I'm crazy, right?") both seem unsurprised that she's reach this point because of a semi-awkward, semi-surprised meeting in an airport. Taeyeon has never believed in fate; she's ultimately terrified by it and listens wisely.

Soojung calls back though.

"She has an apartment," she says quietly. There is no kindness in the younger girl's voice. If there were, it would be misdirected and impossible to be for Taeyeon. "You're going to have to take a cab from the studio, eonni," she says too. "I don't know how to get there from your hotel."

"You could just text me the address?" she asks, almost hopeful. 

It would give her another reason to avoid this; Soojung just laughs.

"I'll let her know that you're on your way," she says, then hangs up after Taeyeon scribbles an address into a hotel notepad.

Her fingers are trembling.

She goes to the studio because it is the right thing to do, misses a few notes, and declares she's taking a break.

She sounds like Hyoyeon when she does all of this. She misses her girls, but the paper is wrinkled into her palm and she bows, rigidly to her producer with apologies and formalities about how tomorrow is going to be another day and she will, absolutely, hit that high note with more than just a glimmer of feeling. There is an unspoken rule about singing love songs; you have to sing them like your heart's already broken, of course.

The truth is that she's done this before and it was clumsy, even clumsy when it was Baekhyun and exciting when there were kisses, car kisses, and selfish declarations of _we're human too_. 

When she sits in the back of a cab, relates the address that she's kept with her all day to the driver, she remembers all of this. She remembers this because it was Sunny who sat with her after, played that stupid love song on the radio, and told her that the novelty wears off and then you're faced with remembering who you really love.

"I should have brought something with me," she says out loud and in front of her, the driver glances at her through his mirror.

She manages a polite smile and turns her gaze to her phone and then the window. She watches the city and studies the lights, thinks about stupid, little things like horns and sounds and are they really going to like me because this is what she is supposed to do. She thinks of how she is doing this alone and how she's not really that brave, but everyone has decided she is, since she's the leader and that's what she has to do.

The cab brings her to a nice neighborhood. She doesn't exactly know where in the city she is. She is surprised that this isn't a hotel and there aren't a million people around; she knows Jessica best when there are crowds around and she's forgotten since then what Sooyeon is like as a result. She still pays the driver, tucks the address into her purse, and stumbles up the stairs to the front door.

The door opens before she knocks. Jessica stands in the frame of the door. Her hair is down and her feet are bare.

"Hi," she says and Taeyeon feels a smile ghost at her mouth.

"Hi," Taeyeon says back.

Jessica offers her hand and she takes it.

 

 

 

 

They are halfway into a bottle of wine and Taeyeon feels more than pleasantly buzzed.

"This is nice," she says out loud, wiping the sweat off of her lip. They are sitting cross-legged and away from Jessica's white couch, on the floor like teenage girls.

Jessica's eyes are dark and her knees are folded into her chest. Her wine glass is empty and sitting away, next to the bottle and on top of the hardwood floor.

"I missed you too," she says finally.

It's surreal, but that long missed sense of urgency unravels in her belly, the one that she's always associated the other woman with. Her head is heavy and she's watching Jessica openly, bravely, and she finds herself shifting onto her knees, moving closer.

Her hands drop on Jessica's knees and she's taller, hovering over her too.

"Say that again," she orders, and Jessica laughs. They're the opposite drunk; Jessica's always been quieter. "I mean it," Taeyeon adds. "I dream about you saying that to me, in all kinds of scenarios -- you'd think that I missed a calling in fucking dramas, you know."

"Kim Taeyeon," Jessica drawls, amused. "You've hanging out with Sooyoung and Hyoyeon too much."

Taeyeon shrugs. "Not the point."

She wants to be angry, she thinks. It's not as desperate of a feeling that it usually is. She is in front of Jessica, watching her, and it's more than just a tangible moment. She's here and that makes a mess of everything.

"I missed you."

Jessica's voice breaks through her head. Taeyeon finds herself shifting and suddenly, Jessica is spreading her knees to shift forward and trap Taeyeon between her legs. Her eyes are dark and it's dangerous. Taeyeon can feel her heart start to beat, slowly, slowly, slowly, but just as heavy and loud in her ears.

She watches as Jessica's fingers reach forward, touching her face. They hit the bridge of her nose and it isn't clumsy. Then it's her thumb along the curve of her cheek, after it's her jaw and then her lip.

"I missed you," she says again, then again: "I missed you and it hurts. It hurts because I remember why I made the choices I did, why I don't regret a damn thing, but worst of all, who I lost and why."

This is Sooyeon, Taeyeon thinks. Her eyes are widen and the alcohol next to them seems more like an afterthought just as well. She pushes her mouth into Jessica's fingers though, misses a beat next and bites against them.

It makes Jessica laugh.

"Sooyeon-ah," Taeyeon says. "I --"

"Shut up," Jessica says, and leans in, but it's Taeyeon that kisses her first.

It's the same amounting confusion from seeing her again the first time. It registers: this is _her_ and it's real, just as real as Jessica's knees pressing against her thighs. Then it passes and Taeyeon begins to taste the wine on Jessica's tongue as it brushes against the roof of her mouth. It's sweeter than she expects and she's greedy, cupping the back of her knee, pulling herself closer. She falls forward too, just slightly, and curls a fist into her hair, angling her face so that she can deepen the kiss and feel like she is peeling her apart.

But one of them stumbles and Jessica is suddenly turning over her, into the hardwood floor, and of course, of course, there will be some kind of bruise on her hip in the morning but she doesn't even care. The warmth from Jessica's mouth is cruel and sharp, it pulls at the knots in her belly and pushes her hand to move forward, across the plane of Jessica's back, then to her shirt and then _underneath_ it to spread against her belly.

She sinks her teeth into Jessica's lip. Then she swallows when Jessica sighs back into her mouth; she doesn't hiss.

A few things happen that she won't remember, or remember and not share, or share and mix, or just straight out deny. But somewhere between Jessica's mouth and her own hands over her belly, sliding between her legs, the alcohol wears off and it becomes really, really _real_. 

It's a myth, you know. Taeyeon has never been a lightweight.

 

 

 

 

The next morning, she calls one of her handlers, apologizes, and reschedules her studio session for later that night. 

"I have a new song," she says, which is almost true. But there's an itch and she hasn't felt like writing, this way, for what feels like years. "I'll bring it later," she finishes the call.

In the kitchen behind her, Jessica is walking around and making breakfast. Bacon grease for hangovers. Toast for settling the stomach. They didn't drink that much; this is almost a formality.

Both of them are wearing t-shirts. Jessica's only hits her hips and makes her legs impossibly long.

"How did you know?" she calls, and Jessica stops, plating some eggs. The button down that she's lent her billows around Taeyeon's legs, but she moves to the kitchen and walks around the island, stepping in and standing next to her. "That I was there," she adds, biting her lip.

Jessica tilts her head. "I saw you in line," she says easily. It isn't a confession. "I also know that the mending is going to have to be on my part. It was always like that."

"Not true," Taeyeon says weakly. She reaches forward brushes Jessica's bangs from her face. Then she writes the love song. "I just forgot how to talk to you."

"I'm never far," Jessica replies.

This is too much of the truth.

"I know," Taeyeon says. Her hand drops against Jessica's hip and she thumbs the skin along the hem of her shirt and her underwear. "I know," she repeats. She looks down and smiles with her teeth. "I'm just terrible with directions."

"Well," Jessica says, "you can always call." Her mouth curls and pushes a finger against Taeyeon's forehead. "Let's call this a second date," she says.

They're not drunk. Her headache disappeared with the second cup of coffee. She's nursing hot water now, readying herself to sing, and all she wants to do is kiss Jessica and walk through the edges of that sense of familiarity. It's weird. It's new. She's never been good at this anyway.

"I'll try," she manages to say instead. Her face is warm and flushed.

It might be a promise. It might not. Jessica seems unfazed, feeds her breakfast, and says something about a meeting in the afternoon. They'll eat and it's weird, companionable, but nothing like the dorm when it would just be the two of them, early risers in the morning even though it's Jessica that loved to sleep.

She thinks about this all the way back to her hotel and in the shower, readying for a change of her own clothes.

Age is too complicated to be just a number.

Later in the studio, she hits the first right high note. Her producer is excited, tells her he's ready for the second song, and her handlers call Seoul to say that maybe another month will be good for her here. They all offer her drinks, it's a celebration, but she declines, only to wait for a cab after everyone else leaves and send the girls a group message with ' _missing you! (｡◕ ∀ ◕｡)_ because she does and hasn't been the best at that either.

Hyoyeon is the only to reply back, probably the only one still up, but still it's with a ' _bring all the presents eonni! (✿◕ ‿◕ฺ)ノ))'_ because sometimes, that is the kind of familiarity she needs to hear. When the cab arrives, she digs into her bag and pulls out the crumpled piece of paper she ripped off from the notepad. She unfolds it, knocks on the driver's door, and hands him the address.

"Here," she says. "Please."

She texts Jessica soon after. She feels a little braver. She might try writing again, she thinks too.

_I'll see you soon._

Taeyeon remembers to breathe.


End file.
